There are two images outside the Several Sources
Foundation shelter in Ramsey,
N.J. One presents the well-known
picture of a young Mary holding Jesus as La
Madonna della Strada.
Near her, the other is an American flag flying at half-mast.

“When legalized abortion ends, the flag will go up,”
says Kathy DiFiore, who founded Several Sources
Foundation to rescue unwed mothers and their unborn babies. “Otherwise, Mary is
in tears each day over her babies dying.”

But the Blessed Mother must also be smiling over the hundreds of young
women Several Sources has helped both physically and spiritually, and the
thousands of babies it has saved across the country from abortion, since 1981.

Just ask 22-year-old Rachel Gunson,
who had her 3-month-old baby boy David baptized last November. A year ago she
left everything in New York
and arrived at the Several Sources house for help.

She got her own room to live in as do other expectant
moms, had help from a housemother, attended weekly counseling, Bible study and
chastity workshops, and got to decorate her baby’s nursery room. Now, with
Several Sources’ help, Rachel’s planning to start nursing school so she can get
back on her feet.

Several Sources “gives the feeling of home,” she
says, and she means it in more ways than one. “Before this I hadn’t gone to
church in a while,” she says. “Coming here was good for me renewing my faith”
as well as beginning motherhood. Rachel will also be confirmed this Easter.

“We teach them about Jesus, his life and sacrifice,
and about Mary,” explains DiFiore. “And we teach them
about the importance of daily prayer, Scripture, faith. The girls know they
have to leave not just holding the baby in their arms but having a seed of
faith in their hearts so they have the ability to teach their child about God
and his word, and be a good example.”

So Many Souls

Founding Several Sources Foundation began for DiFiore when she focused on the Prayer of St. Francis. She
was 33, teaching religion at her parish of St. Paul’s in Ramsey and looking to
do more for God.

“I was expecting some kind of revelation, where God
would speak to me,” she recalls. “Instead it was a soft awakening to looking to
the Scriptures and see, ‘When I was hungry you fed me, helpless, you took me
in.’ I realized that was the blueprint right in front of my face all the time.”

The phone seemed to ring immediately after DiFiore put an ad in the local paper offering young unwed
mothers with difficulties a place to stay in her home. Then it rang again. And again …

Soon, other families helped house the girls. One man
donated his second home on the Jersey shore
for a down payment to buy Several Sources a house. Next, a family donated their
grandparents’ place.

Twelve years ago, Msgr. Thomas McCarthy, pastor of
Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Washington, N.J., gave Several Sources a convent and farmhouse and
obtained necessary approvals from the Newark
archdiocese. Several Sources now has five houses.

“They train the girls to live a good Christian life,” says Msgr. McCarthy, “so when they and their child go
out from the place they’re prepared both spiritually and materially so that can
go forward in the right direction.”

A couple of the girls went through his parish’s RCIA
program and a couple more asked to have their babies baptized.

Back at the flagship house, Susan Lloyd, a retired
nurse volunteering in different capacities, became godmother to Rachel’s son
David.

“The Holy Spirit kept telling me these are young
women with no simple choice of an abortion or not,” she says. “They have so
many issues that come with their pregnancy, or before their pregnancy. These
young women need mothering.”

This mothering and counsel comes from volunteers and
housemothers. And there are reminders of motherhood in the statues and images
of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

“We try to show mothers Mary is a role model for
women,” says DiFiore, “and her purity and chastity is
very important to us as women to contemplate and try to emulate.” That means
the girls must attend a weekly chastity workshop.

At the flagship house, the Garden of Life with its
six shrine stations depicting scenes of the Blessed Mother’s appearances to St.
Catherine Laboure, is the site of many a baby-saving
moment.

“At the image of O
Mary conceived without sin,” explains DiFiore,
“we stop with the mother and say, ‘The baby in your womb has an immortal soul.
Your baby is alive not just physically but spiritually. You’re mothering the
soul of this child. God has a plan for this child.’”

“That concept is very important,” she adds, “because
if you’re speaking to a woman with the slightest amount of faith, you’ve lit a
spark.”

National Hotline

Several Sources Foundation reaches into every city and
town through its national hotline (1-800-NOABORT) and its lifecall.org website.
It overnights more than 1,000 Hotline kits to one of every six callers who will
give their address. For everyone, there’s live counseling or DiFiore’s website answers, plus lists of all pregnancy
crisis centers and shelters in the United States.

The hotline kit includes handwritten personal
testimonies and pictures from mothers who decided to have their child, a baby
sleeper outfit, a video of The Silent
Scream, the story of Mary’s Immaculate Conception and a Miraculous Medal,
materials on the development of the child in the womb coupled with Bible
quotes, a crucifix and a birth announcement.

“The whole concept is to bring this child out of the
womb in the eyes of the mother,” explains DiFiore.

She finds it impossible to tell how many tens of
thousand of babies Several Sources has saved through phone, web and kit because
the ripple effect reaches so far. One girl came from the Philippines
through the website. Another called from Australia.

DiFiore counts her invitation to the White House to meet
President Ronald Reagan among her “cornerstone moments.”

“That was definitely a gift from
God, to shake this man’s hand and have him tell me personally to ‘fight the
good fight’ and to listen to him in the Oval Office espouse his personal belief
in life from moment of our conception.”

Another was several meetings with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who once wrote
her, “Pray the work, Kathy.”

Says DiFiore: “I live
that.”

Joseph
Pronechen writes from

Trumbull, Connecticut.

Information

Several Sources Foundation resources are on
the Internet at severalsourcesfd.org, lifecall.org, chastitycall.org and
gotgame2.org.